How to calculate cost per booked job, and what yours should be

The three costs, and why the middle one matters

There are three ways to measure the cost of marketing, and you need to know which one you are looking at.

Cost per booked job is the everyday working number. You split it by job type to fix its weakness, and you use cost per sold job for replacements and installs where a quote visit comes before the sale.

Step 1: add up everything you spent

Be complete. For the period, usually a calendar month, add:

• ad spend on every platform (Google, Local Services Ads, Meta, others)
• agency, management or freelancer fees
• directory and lead-platform fees, including pay-per-lead services
• marketing software such as call tracking or review tools
• printed material, vehicle wraps and sponsorships, spread across the months they serve

Owners often leave out fees because they arrive on a different invoice from the ad spend. Do not. If a vendor charges $1,500 to manage $3,000 of ads, the ads cost $4,500.

Step 2: count booked jobs from marketing

A booked job is a job that reached the schedule, whether or not it was later completed. Count jobs where the contact can be traced to a marketing source: a tracking number, a tagged link, a web enquiry with a source, or a CSR asking "how did you hear about us?" and recording the answer.

Decide your rules once and write them down:

• Existing customers: count them only when a marketing channel brought them in.
• Cancellations: count the booking, but track cancellation rate separately.
• Multiple jobs from one call: count the first booking; record follow-on jobs as follow-on value.

Step 3: divide, then split

Divide total spend by booked jobs for the company-wide figure. Then repeat the division for each channel, and if you can, for each job type within each channel.

Here is a hypothetical month:

The company-wide $81 looks healthy. The split shows the pay-per-lead platform at almost double, and that is where the next conversation should start.

Step 4: set a ceiling from gross profit

A cost per booked job is only good or bad compared with what the job leaves behind. Set a ceiling for each job type:

1. Find the gross profit per job. Average invoice multiplied by your gross margin for that type.
2. Choose an acquisition share. The portion of that gross profit you are willing to spend to win the job. Many owners start somewhere between a tenth and a quarter, then adjust as they see results.
3. Adjust for close rate on quoted work. Multiply by your close rate to get the ceiling per booked quote.
4. Add follow-on value where it is real. If repairs lead to replacements often enough, raise the repair ceiling a little.

Worked example, all hypothetical:

Two lessons jump out. First, the repair ceiling of about $50 is below the $70–$90 the channels above are charging. That is common, and it is why repair campaigns need to surface replacement work, or be kept lean. Second, a booked heat pump quote can carry nearly six times the marketing cost of a booked repair and still be the better buy.

Step 5: compare, then act

Put the actual cost per booked job next to the ceiling for each job type and channel. Then act in this order:

1. Fix booking first. If calls arrive but do not book, the cost per booked job is high for reasons the ad account cannot fix. Look at answering, reply speed and missed calls before anything else. Our booking-rate coaching covers this.
2. Move budget between channels. Shift money from channels over the ceiling to those under it, while watching capacity.
3. Rebuild by job type. Campaigns and pages built around specific job types make the split possible and improve the mix. See margin-weighted campaigns.
4. Grow what compounds. Maintenance members and organic search lower the blended cost over time.

Common mistakes that distort the number

• Leaving out fees. Covered above, and the most common error.
• Counting contacts as bookings. An enquiry or call that never reached the schedule is not a booked job.
• Mixing periods. Spend from March with bookings from April gives a false picture. Match booking date to the period in which the spend ran, and accept a little overlap.
• Letting each platform count itself. Ad platforms tend to claim credit generously. Use your own matched data from your field-service records.
• Ignoring the unmatched share. If a third of your jobs have no source, say so in the report rather than spreading them across channels.
• Reacting to one cold snap. Weather can swing one month dramatically. Decide on quarters.

A monthly routine you can keep

1. On the first business day, export last month's jobs with phone number, date, job type and invoice amount.
2. Export call and enquiry logs from your tracking tool for the same month.
3. Match contacts to jobs by phone number and date.
4. Total spend by channel, including fees.
5. Calculate cost per booked job by channel and job type, and compare with your ceilings.
6. Write three sentences: what improved, what got worse, and what you will change.

That routine takes a couple of hours once it is set up. If you would rather have it built and run for you, that is what cost-per-booked-job tracking does, and the ceilings come from margin mapping. For the recurring side of the picture, read the maintenance agreement guide.